India Aims To Make Every Car Electric By 2030 In Bid To Tackle Pollution (independent.co.uk) 118
India's energy minister has unveiled plans for every car sold in the country to be powered by electricity by the year 2030. "The move is intended to lower the cost of importing fuel and lower costs for running vehicles," reports The Independent. From the report: âoeWe are going to introduce electric vehicles in a very big way," coal and mines minister Piyush Goyal said at the Confederation of Indian Industry Annual Session 2017 in New Delhi. "We are going to make electric vehicles self-sufficient... The idea is that by 2030, not a single petrol or diesel car should be sold in the country." Mr Goyal said the electric car industry would need between two and three years of government assistance, but added that he expected the production of the vehicles to be "driven by demand and not subsidy" after that. "The cost of electric vehicles will start to pay for itself for consumers," he said according to the International Business Times. "We would love to see the electric vehicle industry run on its own," he added. An investigation by Greenpeace this year found that as many as 2.3 million deaths occur every year due to air pollution in the country. The report, entitled "Airpocalypse," claimed air pollution had become a "public health and economic crisis" for Indians. It said the number of deaths caused by air pollution was only "a fraction less" than the number of deaths from tobacco use, adding that 3 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was lost to the levels of toxic smog.
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Way to go, India! (Score:4, Insightful)
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yes but those can't buy cars so ...
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Re:Way to go, India! (Score:5, Informative)
most of that electricity that is there comes from coal,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_India#Installed_capacity
India is planning to invest $100B in solar between now and 2022. Most installed capacity is coal, but a much smaller fraction of new capacity is coal.
the significant bump in demand will mean more coal, so how is this helping air pollution again?
This point has been beaten to death, but apparently it needs to be repeated yet again: Even when using coal, electric cars produce less CO2 than ICEs. They also produce less other pollution, since a single coal plant scrubber is far more cost effective than thousands of individual catalytic converters on ICE vehicles. Also, the generation can occur outside of cities where far fewer people breathe it.
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> Also, the generation can occur outside of cities where far fewer people breathe it.
To go off topic slightly, I've often thought that this is the main reason the majority of US manufacturing occurs in China. So the generation of pollution can occur outside our own cities. Like, way outside.
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Re:Way to go, India! (Score:5, Interesting)
Nah. Mostly it happened for one simple reason: an autocratic government that doesn't give a damn how many people die on the job - and a billion desperate people, which makes for a labour price no country can ever compete with.
Sorry, not going to happen. No amount of deregulation will ever do it. America can never, again, compete with Chinese labour.
So how do you keep your manufacturing alive, and creating jobs, when you cannot ever be as cheap ? You need to give people a reason to buy your good DESPITE it being more expensive. Germany had all the same price pressures as America- and a much MORE worker-friendly labour law, and kept their manufacturing alive and growing.
Because people buy German goods EVEN though they are more expensive. Germany's "something worth paying more for" was exceptional engineering. The goods are high quality, long lasting, envelope-pushing technology. Their cars were more efficient, more pleasant to drive, and safer if you got in an accident for example.
This is what America failed to do in manufacturing - give people a reason to buy the goods they made. And vertical integration as a business philosophy died an unjust death. That's why America has all those silicon valley companies and even the ones who specialise in hardware no longer make hardware. But that wasn't always the way. For a decade and a half the best selling, most popular, and cheapest computer in the world was the commodore64 - and it achieved that exactly because Commodore was by then the only computer company to still have their own factories. Vertical integration became a key enabler of their engineering expertise. You have a suggestion for a minor modification to the chip which could speed up certain calculations... but you're worried it will overheat. Instead of relying on simulators which must inevitably be conservative in their estimates, they could actually turn on their own factory and make 5 chips with the new design and test them - and see if it worked. And then go mass-production finally with a chip that combined the best results of hundreds of these small inhouse-only test chips - and itself tested extensively in a tiny production run.
That model is pretty much dead today though.
But yes, countries that want to have manufacturing industries today - need to offer something worth paying more for. Because you can never beat China on price, with a billion desperate people and autocratic government that doesn't care what those people think: they can ALWAYS undercut you, no matter how low you go, they WILL go lower.
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Never? I work for a Chinese company. We are shifting more jobs and manufacturing here each year. Why? Cost and quality. Chinese labor is getting expensive and the productivity and quality isn't keeping up. Meanwhile, any manufacturing in the US is so lean, and the quality is so much better, we save time and money. We're talking engineering, machining, etc. All for export to China.
The only thing slowing us down from expanding in the US faster are capital controls. It's a nightmare getting cash out o
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your logic is flawed - a mass production facility is not required for prototyping.
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I wouldn't say flawed, I'd say incomplete. You're right about prototyping. But that's nowhere near the bulk of manufacturing.
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I never said you needed a mass production facility for prototyping. I said you need a production facility.
As it happens - the Commodore company was quite adamant that their success sprouted from prototyping in the SAME mass production facility where the final product would be made.
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This is the reason trade barriers were supposed to exist. By comparing the relative benefits your citizens get to the abuse of citizens of other nations at a discount, you enact trade barriers to keep manufacturing and jobs local. A practical example:
The $0.02 you spend per part that goes towards not pouring sludge in the local USA river results in a $0.02 import tariff on China where they could otherwise pour the sludge down the river. If you enact free trade the result is jobs and manufacturing goes to wh
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That's not necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps the availability of electric cars will drive the need for a reliable electric infrastructure.
Or it could be a technological dead end. But even then, valuable information will be had from having done the experiment.
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Hillbillies will be hillbillies, even when they are hillbillies in India.
Re:Way to go, India! (Score:5, Insightful)
If only you were to put that much effort to provide running water, electricity and sanitation
Or maybe they could do more than one thing at a time, and try to solve problems in parallel. Just because someone in Uttar Pradesh doesn't have a flush toilet, doesn't mean that people in Mumbai should just accept suffocating air pollution for the next 13 years.
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Actually the people there already have cars. ... if you can not drink water from the tap it sounds kind of pointless to me.
Converting them to electric makes sense.
No idea bout 'running water'
Re:Way to go, India! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a shame massive organisations like the government of over a billion people can only do one thing at a time. Otherwiseâ they could try to help everyone in different ways, simultaneously.
Imagine if they could work to provide sanitation AND keep the air breathable. Sadly as we all know, governments can only do one thing at a time.
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So who is it that shouldn't be taken seriously?
Personally I think both, but people in glass houses shouldn't really post while stoned should they above poster?
Typo (Score:2)
India should be taken seriously despite problems just as the USA should be taken seriously despite the "rust belt" being abandoned etc.
Re:Way to go, India! (Score:4, Interesting)
Bill Gates was in India recently and actually posted about this very topic [gatesnotes.com].
tldr, they are putting in a lot of effort:
So far, the progress is impressive. In 2014, when Clean India began, just 42 percent of Indians had access to proper sanitation. Today 63 percent do. And the government has a detailed plan to finish the job by October 2, 2019, the 150th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhiâ(TM)s birth. Officials know which states are on track and which are lagging behind, thanks to a robust reporting system that includes photographing and geotagging each newly installed toilet.
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If only you were to put that much effort to provide running water, electricity and sanitation to the more than 600 million Indian citizens who lack it, the rest of the world would start taking you seriously.
India has enough running water, electricity and sanitation . . . India has just plain too many people; with 600 million+ people, there will never be enough of something to go around. Provide more running water? The Ganges will be stone dry in a few days. They will need to ignite vast forest fires to melt the glaciers in the Himalayas to keep the Ganges running. Electricity everywhere? They won't be able to keep the grid standing, and no one will be able to find or afford a light bulb in a store. Provi
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Here you go...
http://electrics10.webs.com/ [webs.com]
https://youtu.be/_LV8zqJ9YOQ [youtu.be]
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If you're going electric, go in style [youtube.com]!
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Stylish is overrated:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
What will happen to all those spent batteries? (Score:2)
With at least 200 million vehicles, if just 100 million of these become electric, I with about a quarter of them getting battery replacements, where will the spent batteries be kept?
How about pollution?
Folks, be prepared for a toxic mess over there.
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The batteries will be in cars for 10 years or so and then they can be recycled for their valuable materials.
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The batteries will be in cars for 10 years or so and then they can be recycled for their valuable materials.
Where are you buying these magical 10-year-plus car batteries?
Re:What will happen to all those spent batteries? (Score:5, Informative)
The current Li-ion batteries installed in cars such as the Tesla should last at least 10 years. Of course, they haven't been in the cars 10 years yet but some cars have traveled over 200,000 miles with less than 10% degradation.
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Where are you buying these magical 10-year-plus car batteries?
You can find plenty of them in 10-year-plus Priuses. Even after 10 years, most of them still have 80% or better battery capacity.
Of course, technology has improved, so batteries produced today should last even longer.
Re:What will happen to all those spent batteries? (Score:4, Interesting)
Except like a Prius (but unlike, say, a Leaf), a large battery EV like a Tesla (or a GM Bolt) doesn't need to hit the ends of its capacity. In fact, a Tesla experiences very few cycles (relatively speaking) since the battery is so large. You seem to think that a small battery electric car will last longer than a large battery electric car, but the reality is the opposite (although both the Volt and Prius are special cases as they are plug-in hybrids).
Electric car batteries are designed to last for the entire life of the vehicle, like over 200,000 miles. At some point, I suppose you'd need to replace a car engine, too. Same deal. Car engine is recycled. Electric car battery is recycled.
India will get it done because the materials in car batteries are worth recycling. It's the same reason we don't put car engines in a landfill but instead we scrap them.
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http://www.planetcustodian.com... [planetcustodian.com] (NSFW. Lots of images of bodies, sewage, and human waste.)
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Any kind of battery is easily recycled.
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How about pollution?
You know what? How about you keep an ICE going in your bedroom for the next year and I will keep an electric engine going together with storing whatever battery waste I get there.
Make it ten if you want, or fifty years.
Not even counting the emissions you will still end up with more toxic sludge from the ICE than I will get from the batteries.
Well, they already have that mess. Now they want to reduce it to something more manageable.
Power hungry (Score:3)
Will India's electric infrastructure handle the additional load? Do they have enough generating capacity for when everyone plugs in their car at night? Finally, will they simply offset the burning of oil with burning coal at power plants? The article was sorely lacking in any substantial information about the plan.
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Re:Power hungry (Score:4, Informative)
India just opened the largest solar plant in the world and it only took 8 months to build. Much faster to install solar than anything else. (Coal plants take years and nuclear takes forever)
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/... [aljazeera.com]
India expects to install 10 GW of solar this year:
https://cleantechnica.com/2017... [cleantechnica.com]
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india at night --> sun in europe & africa
India is 4-6 hours off from all of Europe and Africa. That still leaves a lot of darkness!
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India just unveiled the world's largest solar plant:
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/... [aljazeera.com]
It only took 8 months to build it.
India will be the third largest solar market this year.
Electric cars are as clean as the electricity used (Score:5, Insightful)
Electric cars are fine and dandy, but we still need to produce electricity to power them. Where will that come from? Solar and wind would be the best source as they pollute the least; nuclear is a good option if you're using more modern plant designs. Natural gas might actually be worse in terms of CO2 emissions. Coal would be the worst case scenario; the smoke contains all sorts of pollutants not emitted by modern gasoline engines.
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Natural gas worse than what, gasoline? No way, natural gas is CH4, gasoline has a lot more carbon than that.
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Electric cars are fine and dandy, but we still need to produce electricity to power them. Where will that come from? Solar and wind would be the best source as they pollute the least; nuclear is a good option if you're using more modern plant designs. Natural gas might actually be worse in terms of CO2 emissions. Coal would be the worst case scenario; the smoke contains all sorts of pollutants not emitted by modern gasoline engines.
Precisely spot on. Couldn't resist posting that guess what the majority of electricity in India is produced by? coal is 60% of all electricity in India [wikipedia.org]. This actually makes co2 pollution worse [shrinkthatfootprint.com] than efficient gas engines, or hybrids. Not that it isn't the right move, but they need to couple it with a serious push in green energy or the only thing they will be helping is particulates and smog in the cities, co2 emissions could worsen.
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No, it does not.
Car engines have an efficiency of 20% or less.
A coal power plant is at 45%.
Charging electric cars is close to 100%
So: using coal plants to charge electric cars basically reduces emissions by 50%.
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Charging electric cars is close to 100%
It's more like 90%, and then the motor is about 95% efficient at using the power. That's still pretty fantastic, but there continue to be significant losses which must be accounted for.
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Electric engines are around 99% efficient.
Same for charging batteries, that is why I wrote 'close to'.
The losses are ofc in the transmission and tires etc. But those are the same regardless of engine type.
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Electric engines are around 99% efficient. Same for charging batteries, that is why I wrote 'close to'.
The losses are ofc in the transmission and tires etc. But those are the same regardless of engine type.
Electric motors are only efficient when lightly loaded. Pmdc motors used in some EVs are around 90-93% at peak efficiency, 50% efficient at peak power, and drop to 0% efficiency when stopped/stalled - that is when they accelerate the vehicle most strongly. An induction motor, used in EVs, is slightly more complicated, but they tend to be more efficient across a larger rpm range. However they are still around 50% efficient at peak power and have poor efficiency at low speed high torque. This isn't counti
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I never heard that an electric engine had different efficiencies at different rpm's.
And honestly: why should that be the case?
Chargers are also close to 99% efficiency ... transmission losses don't really make sense to count in. You pay what the meter displays at your house. No one cares how much loss you had before, that is up to the grid operator.
And: oil is transported in pipelines, usually. And they have transmission losses, too. That is how pipelines work. They have pumps every few dozen km, those pump
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Re:Electric cars are as clean as the electricity u (Score:5, Interesting)
The energy from burning fossil fuels comes from combining hydrocarbons (chains of carbon and hydrogen) with oxygen in the air to form CO2 and H2O (primarily). Both CO2 and H2O are at a lower energy state than the original hydrocarbon, and thus their formation gives off energy.
Natural gas (CH4) gives you 1 CO2 + 2 H2O. 2 water for each carbon dioxide molecule generated.
Gasoline consists mostly of alkenes and cycloalkenes [wikipedia.org].
So gasoline only generates 1.25 or fewer water molecules for each carbon dioxide molecule, compared to natural gas at 2 water molecule for each carbon dioxide molecule.
Natural gas produces the most water per CO2 atom of any hydrocarbon, meaning burning it generates the most energy per CO2 atom emitted of any hydrocarbon. Or put another way, for a given amount of energy generated, natural gas does it with the least CO2 emissions of any hydrocarbon (because a greater portion of its energy comes from forming water). Environmentalists just try to badmouth it because they wanted us to switch to renewables, and instead we switched to a cleaner fossil fuel.
Methane (natural gas) is actually about 10x more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. So if you're not gonna burn natural gas to generate energy, you're better off just burning it [wikipedia.org] to convert it into carbon dioxide. Before oil prices rose above about $30/bbl, it wasn't worth it to capture the methane which came up the wells with the petroleum (methane requires high pressure or cryogenic storage). So we were just burning a lot of it without trying to capture its energy. At least now we're using that energy.
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Environmentalists just try to badmouth it because they wanted us to switch to renewables, and instead we switched to a cleaner fossil fuel.
Environmentalists "just" badmouth it because it's releasing sequestered carbon, and they're fracking to get more of it. Gee, is that all?
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>you're better off just burning it [wikipedia.org] to convert it into carbon dioxide
That is only true of methane already in the atmosphere or about to go into it. Now in some cases this applies. In Sweden a glacier being melted by global warming is now unleashing vast swathes of formerly ice-trapped methane, the Swedes have (quite wisely) decided to burn this methane in a powerplant rather than let it get into the atmosphere.
On the other hand the methane trapped where fracking goes to get it - would pret
Re:Electric cars are as clean as the electricity u (Score:5, Insightful)
India has nuclear power, too. And electric cars (especially with large batteries) are good at smoothing over variable renewables since drivers can charge when power is cheapest (just like people fill up their cars where gas is cheapest).
And even coal (if burned far from the city and with good scrubbers) beats an asthma-inducing and smog-filled city. A coal power plant also can be run very efficiently. If you include the energy cost needed to refine gasoline, then a good, supercritical steam, multi-stage coal power plant charging an electric car may even have fewer CO2 emissions than a conventional gasoline powered vehicle.
But India is also close to the equator, which means more sunshine and less seasonal variation in sunlight (northern Germany and the UK are actually terrible for solar for this reason).
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And electric cars (especially with large batteries) are good at smoothing over variable renewables since drivers can charge when power is cheapest (just like people fill up their cars where gas is cheapest).
Plus if you design the motor to run on the same frequency and voltage as the mains, or at least design the motor controller to be capable of outputting it, you can have the car itself supply power back to the grid to help smooth out the dips.
Re:Electric cars are as clean as the electricity u (Score:4, Insightful)
Coal would be the worst case scenario; the smoke contains all sorts of pollutants not emitted by modern gasoline engines.
I'm not sure how many more times it needs to be said, but one coal plant is far preferable to the equivalent energy generated in many thousands of small inefficient engines. Extra bonus points for the coal plant not being in the city centre.
Switching from diesel to 100% coal powered ICE is still a net win for people, but the reality is not going to be 100% coal powered so it's only really a question of how much better it can get, not if it will be better.
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Range is not the concern there, cost is. (Score:5, Informative)
The main issue is cost. As long as battery car costs more than gas car, it will be difficult to persuade them to buy electric. Second major issue access to charging outlets. Most people park on the street or in apartment car parking spaces. So unless price comes down a lot electric cars will not gain traction there. But, if the imminent inevitable battery technology break through comes through, then they will switch to electric in a hurry. They will find ways to have metered outlets in car parking spaces and even the streets. Third issue is the frequent power cuts and brown outs.
In fact Tesla's wall battery for residential uses will be more attractive to them. Almost all the homes have a couple of truck lead-acid batteries fully charged to run the fridge, a couple of lights, and the TV during the powercuts. Now a days I see ads for "inverter air conditioners". Air conditioners designed to run on AC power generated by the inverter from a 12 v battery. The wave form is a crudely chopped square wave, and it is brutal on the motors. But these aircon motors are designed to handle it.
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Actually, I think the main issue will be distribution of electricity [google.com]. Their distribution system is haphazard, unsafe, poorly or not designed, and in many cases illegal. Now they're proposing doubling or tripling the total amount of electricity delivered over those lines to charge electric vehicles?
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And as your example rightly points out, you need to think big. India's LED project has sold 500m bulbs. Not bad going.
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In Europe people are driving long distances in a car once a year. For vacations ... when we have to take kids, surfing gear and other stuff with us.
Otherwise you use a train or a plane. Driving more then lets say 300km is just plain stupid.
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>Now a days I see ads for "inverter air conditioners". Air conditioners designed to run on AC power generated by the inverter from a 12 v battery. The wave form is a crudely chopped square wave, and it is brutal on the motors. But these aircon motors are designed to handle it.
I think you have this wrong. Inverter air conditioners use an internal inverter to generate a PWM to power the compressor. The compressor can thus run at whatever speed makes the most sense.
I know it seems counter-intuitive at fir
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Make everyone use the toilet instead (Score:2)
I think that the thousands of people dying from infections they caught from the designated shitting streets are a bigger problem than the few who may die by car-based pollution.
Then again it might not be as glamorous for the government to announce as making every car electric.
And no this is not racism, out-door defecating is indeed a huge problem in India:
http://www.planetcustodian.com... [planetcustodian.com]
http://theplanetd.com/india-is... [theplanetd.com]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/heal... [bbc.co.uk]
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Governments are capable of working on many issues simultaneously.
They are also capable of ignoring many issues simultaneously.
Not going to happen (Score:3)
India doesn't have a complete grid, much less a grid strong enough to recharge a bunch of cars. Solar and battery would work, if they could afford it... or indoor plumbing. There are many issues preventing this from happening but I'm glad they are at least trying.
The US grid is old as well and it needs work to gi (Score:2)
The US grid is old as well and it needs work.
worth doing (Score:3)
So, yes, it's been pointed out that a great number, maybe the majority, of the population don't have running water or decent sanitation. But any solution can be abandoned by sufficiently enlarging the scope of the problem. Cities in India have a pollution problem that is significantly worse than in the US. That particular problem is worth solving, even though the problems of water and sanitation also need solving.
The possible win I see in this sort of conversion, besides reducing air pollution, is that it makes having a reliable electrical infrastructure more urgent, so maybe that problem will be solved also. And if they solve it with point source solutions like solar panels, those are naturally adaptable for smaller communities that are currently off the grid, which would be another win.
Or, it could all be a scam to fill the pockets of a few officials. We'll just have to see.
Yet They Still Shit in the Streets (Score:1)
Such an ambitious undertaking and yet the majority of the population doesn't even have a indoor toilet. The masses still need to poop in the streets or on the railroad tracks. They local governments still hire poop scrappers to walk around the town to pick up human waste.
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They could kill two birds with one car. Introducing, the first poop-powered car! If they run out of fuel, they can scrape it off the streets.